Re: multimodal style

On Thu, 7 Mar 1996, JuanJo Miguez wrote:

> For blind people there is no problem but 
> with low vision people there might be one...and it will make it 
> difficult to use. *Some* low vision people wants to use their low
> vision to read text from the screen, and that text must be the same 
> size, the way they could distinguish between "sizes" is with the 
> volume in their audio devices. They need allways the same font-size
> and background (i.e. Background black and yellow fonts) but the 
> audio could help them to know what kind of "sizes" the author is 
> using. If you link them together some low vision people will get in
> trouble. One possible solution to that is to use:
> 
> size:5     font-size: 5                      volume is inherited or default
> size:3,5   font-size: 3                      volume: 5
> size:,5    font-size is inherited or default volume: 5
> 

I had not considered this problem, but you could solve it without more 
attributes than I proposed.  I did not recommend eliminating volume, 
rather I suggested that size be used in preference to volume when it is 
reasonable.  This is clearly a special case where both must be set 
independently to get good results.  

The best solution I can think of right now is to also allow "+N" and "-N" 
as values for the attributes, so that low vision people could simply 
specify < size: +3, volume: -3 >, which would first increase volume and 
font-size and then decrease volume by the same amount.  It makes a little 
bit more typing work for them, but they probably only have to do it 
once.  It also makes sense to allow these values so that authors can 
specify changes in font size that display properly for someone who needs 
a different mean font size (e.g., someone with bad vision, or with a 
small display).  I'll add these to the next version.

Thanks for the comment!  Regards,

David

Work: seibert@hep.physics.mcgill.ca         Home: 6420 36th Ave.
Physics Department, McGill University       Montreal, PQ, H1T 2Z5 
3600 Univ. St., Mtl., PQ, H3A 2T8, Canada   Canada
(514) 398-6496; FAX: (514) 398-3733         (514) 255-5965

Received on Thursday, 7 March 1996 09:58:28 UTC